CoCo redistricting workshops set

Contra Costa has launched a series of workshops where residents may view and voice their preferences, or submit their own, among a set of proposed new map boundaries for the county’s five supervisoral districts.

The county also has an online mapping site — www.ccredistricting.org — where residents may draw and submit their own maps.

Following the decennial census, elected boards must redraw their political districts in order to attain equal populations and comply with the constitutional mandate of “one person, one vote.”

Residents will view four map concepts prepared by county staff along with maps submitted by the Contra Costa Times’ editorial writer Dan Borenstein and the Contra Costa Citizens Redistricting Task Force, a volunteer organization started by the Contra Costa Republican Party.

The board of supervisors will vote on the final map in late summer.

The meetings will be held from from 7-8:30 p.m. (except for one workshop, as noted) on the following days and locations:

Lisa Vorderbrueggen

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After the first week, attendance at workshops shows that only political gurus like me are interested in this great transparent process.

John W

From what I can tell, the most significant question is what happens with Piepho’s district. Now that there is sufficient population in East county to have that to be it’s own district, that’s what should happen. It makes no sense for the district to wrap around the mountain to include any part of San Ramon (where I live), Danville or Walnut Creek. Based on drive time, I am closer to San Francisco City Hall than to Discovery Bay. To the extent the Board of Supervisors represent district-specific concerns rather than county-wide concerns, the Delta communities and Central county have little in the way of shared interests.

Elwood

Like all politicians given the opportunity to draw new districts for themselves, getting re-elected will be their primary consideration.

Allen Payton

While Lisa’s correct that our task force was started by the local GOP, we expanded it and included anyone who wanted to participate, which includes those registered Republican, Libertarian, Democrat and independent, according to what we’ve been told by the members, although we didn’t check their voter registration. We’ve worked on both the county supervisors districts and the statewide congressional and state legislative districts, as well. We drew maps based on the criteria/principles found in Prop. 11, those put forward by the Supervisors in their Feb 8, 2011 vote directing staff to set up the process, as well as our own principles. Our number overarching principle is “Let the people choose their representatives not the representatives choose their people” and our number one principle is Neutral, Non-Partisan Procedures. To ensure that, we have not done a voter registration overlay of the districts we created and submitted. We did however do a racial overlay to comply with the 1965 Voting Rights Act. You can see our Plan A2/Concept 6 and tell it’s based on common sense, especially compact districts. Of the 53 Census Designated Places in the county, which includes all 19 cities and the unincorporated communities, only one is split – Concord, the county’s largest city. That’s the same concept being used to draw the state legislative and congressional district maps. We used the same Maptitude software being used by the contractor to the California Citizens Redistricting Commission.